


Work all night

by Ilrona



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff about making the budget of a planet-destroying weapon, M/M, Oral Sex, Pre-Canon, Space Economy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 06:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7628212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilrona/pseuds/Ilrona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years before Starkiller is finished, Hux has to spend one night revising the budget of the superweapon. Kylo, though he doesn’t really understand economy, stays with him and helps Hux in his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work all night

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/4613.html?thread=11185669#cmt11185669) at the TFA kink meme.
> 
> Title is from the lyrics of ‘Money, Money, Money’ by ABBA.

Hux lets Kylo into his quarters. Then, instead of kissing him while pushing an eager thigh between his legs, he only gives Kylo a rueful grimace. Maybe Hux wanted it to be a smile, but it didn’t end up looking like a smile at all.

“Tonight is not good, Ren. Go back to polishing the femurs of your enemies or whatever you do in your downtime.”

Kylo frowns. “What are  _you_  doing?”  _What could be more important than fucking,_  is what his question truly means, but that would sound desperate.

“I have to remake the budget. Of the superweapon,” Hux clarifies, when Kylo just tilts his head in confusion. He brandishes the datapad in his hand as if it were a blaster. There’s something on it, but Kylo is not able to read it. “Several parts cost a lot more than they did when I came up with the first version of the budget. And Snoke wants to see it tomorrow.” Hux lowers his voice, like he thinks Snoke could be hiding somewhere in his quarters. “It doesn’t use the Force, and you know how obsessed Snoke is with the Force. The budget must be flawless to convince him this weapon must be made, otherwise he will decide that we should use the First Order's money on other, less effective weapons. And I can use only the Finalizer's credits, so it's quite hard.”

Ah. The weapon. Kylo thinks it’s a bit too much – a whole system utterly destroyed! –, but perhaps it is necessary. Darth Vader didn’t hinder the Death Star either, after all.

Tomorrow they can have a celebratory fuck after Snoke dismisses Hux. Or, if Snoke rejects it, a consolatory fuck.

Either version sounds good to Kylo. But the idea of _now_ going back to his own lonely quarters doesn’t seem appealing.

“I could help.”

He’s rather offended by the incredulous look Hux gives him.

“It’s true that I don’t know much about economy or whatever, but I could still help.”

Hux considers it. He thinks about it so long that the urge to fidget starts to tickle Kylo’s legs.

“Fine.” Hux sighs, like he’s allowing Kylo a great favor when he should be thanking Kylo for offering his help. “But if you bother me too much, I will kick you out.”

Kylo moves further into the room. There are several colorful holograms above Hux's table: spreadsheets stuffed full of numbers and other charts and diagrams. They remind Kylo of the abstract paintings from a very long time ago in a fancy museum on Coruscant. Pretty but incomprehensible.

He also notices the cup near the edge of the table, the steam rising towards a collection of red, blue and yellow numbers hovering in the air. He steps closer and wrinkles his nose at the harsh, unpleasant scent of caf.

“Do you really need that?” Kylo asks.

“Of course!” Hux exclaims, sounding more horrified than Kylo has ever heard him. “I will fall asleep before I can get even half of the budget done without the caf!”

“But it can make you jittery if you drink too much. There’s this tea, I use it before meditating, it can keep you alert without the bad effects of caf. That would be better for you.”

Hux just shrugs, a non-verbal whatever. What an ungrateful bastard, Kylo thinks.

Hux sits back onto his chair, staring up at the holograms. Kylo sits on the bed.

“This is all the New Republic’s fault,” Hux starts to explain. Kylo can see only the back of his head from the bed, but it’s not difficult to imagine the resentful expression on his face. “They pull so much money into the Core Worlds like a greedy black hole with their taxes and exports. Then the poorer planets in the other regions don’t have enough money to buy many products from the New Republic because their prices are getting higher and higher, there’s a constantly increasing lack of products and so they become more and more expensive.”

Kylo isn’t sure whether that’s true or not, uninitiated as he is in the mysteries of economy. It sort of sounds like it makes sense, but he also knows that Hux could find a reason to blame the New Republic for the Finalizer accidentally crashing into an asteroid field.

Kylo reclines on the bed and pulls Hux’s pillow closer to rest his head on it, deciding he might as well get comfortable. “Won’t there also be a huge inflation if we destroy the Hosnian system? Because of the sudden lack of many products that used to be grown and manufactured on those planets?”

“That’s quite likely,” Hux admits. He turns around, and the look on his face is reflecting wonder, like he’s surprised Kylo figured this out. “But it still has to be done: this is the only way to  _truly_  defeat the New Republic. We will deal with the economy after the Empire is remade.”

Kylo wishes he could help more. He has to buy food and clothes and other small things sometimes on his missions (other times he takes the belongings of the slaughtered), he even has his own credit chip, but he has no idea how much money a planet-superweapon needs. Millions or billions of credits? There’s even something like a trillion credits, right? What can you buy with _that_? It’s sort of like the number of beings living in the Hosnian system, he realizes with a wry smile, his stomach twisting. You can count their estimated number, but can you truly  _understand_  how much it is?

There was, in his previous life, a holocartoon series for children about two Twi'lek sisters, and Kylo remembers an episode where one of them found herself on an unfamiliar planet with no money in her pockets. She run into a huttlet, and he gave her all his credits so that she could buy a ticket at the spaceport and fly back home. It was a rather obvious attempt to combat the anti-Hutt prejudices claiming that all Hutts are money-hungry criminal slavers, but the reason Kylo thinks about it now is because it made the problem of not having money seem so simply solvable. Be nice, give your money to someone else and they will be instantly saved.

“You would think fifth-degree construction droids are cheap, right, Ren?” Kylo has never thought about anything related to the cost of droids, any degree. He makes a non-committal humming sound. Hux takes it as encouragement to continue, though he likely would have continued even if Kylo remained completely silent. “They used to be, but now they cost so much I’m starting to think it would be easier to just use the stormtroopers, at least in the less dangerous areas… It could be like training for them. But if they die in an accident we lose two or more decades of education, food, housing and all the other things spent on them."

“Well, they die a lot in battle.” Kylo walks to the table, wanting to be closer to Hux. He glances at the caf. There’s no steam rising from the cup anymore, but it still smells awful.

“That’s true. But they’re more useful in battle, whereas construction droids are better at, well, construction and surviving in harsh conditions. I think I will deal with this problem later, depending on how the rest of the budget turns out.”

“Do that,” Kylo says. Feeling like an idiot for not having anything smart to add, he looks again at the caf. “I could make you that tea I mentioned earlier.”

“Okay,” Hux mumbles, focused on all the data hovering in front of him, his brows furrowed in concentration. “Sure.”

“I will leave now, but I will come back.”

Hux nods. It’s very obvious he’s not listening. Kylo is tempted to wave a hand in front of Hux’s face, but in the end decides to just leave, putting his helmet on before stepping out into the corridors.

In his own quarters, he makes the tea quickly. It smells so much better than the caf, a gentle, soothing herbal scent. While he waits for it to be done, he thinks about what Snoke told him about a month ago. That Hux has too much ambition lurking inside his heart, and Kylo must be wary of him.

Kylo likes the friends with benefits or whatever relationship they have now, but he can see Hux one day becoming nothing but a bitter rival bent on pushing Kylo down so he can stand above him and smirk down at him. Hux doesn’t have enough yet, as commander of the Finalizer his achievements are great but nothing incredible yet (though Kylo isn’t the leader of the knights yet either, but he will be soon, he has  _plans_ ). But if Hux could make the weapon a reality and destroy the Hosnian system, change history irrevocably…

The tea is finished, the water now the rich purple color it should be. Kylo wonders if he should try to sabotage Hux’s work instead, so that they can remain in this comfortable relationship, Hux not powerful enough yet to be competition. But he would hate it if Hux tried to stop Kylo from becoming greater, so he will let – help, even – Hux become whoever he is capable of becoming. If Hux becomes too much later, Kylo will deal with it then.

In Hux's room again, Kylo gives Hux the tea. Hux carefully cradles the clay cup in his hands, his thumb caressing the unfamiliar texture with curiosity. Kylo’s cup is very much non-regulation on the Finalizer; he bought (didn’t steal and the vendor remained alive) six for twenty credits on a small, sparsely-populated planet a year ago.

“It’s good,” Hux says between two sips, sounding pleased. “Quite good.” Kylo smiles at him. Hux’s lips twitch back. “Makes me a little sad we have such bad food, but delicious food is more expensive. I’m working on trying to cut corners with the food now, by the way. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that important.”   

“No, you just need it to survive.”

Hux rolls his eyes. “ _Good_  food is not that important.”

He puts the tea down, then grabs his datapad. “The crew of the Finalizer is around 82000. The bantha and the nerf meat ration bars cost five credits, while the meiloorun melon and honey are only three and a half. Everyone gets two per day, but if instead of bantha and nerf they get meiloorun and honey, that means that in one standard month we have to pay only 17220000 instead of 24600000. The difference is 7380000 credits. And this is just one example of many. We can also water down the brandy for the officers, and if we can find a brandy that isn’t as expensive as the fancy Coruscant brandy we have now – which isn’t even that good, it costs so much only because of the name. So if we have 19000 officers and…”

“Okay,” Kylo interrupts him, holding up a hand. “Got it. You don’t have to continue.”

He steps behind Hux, resting his hands on Hux’s shoulders. He starts rubbing, cringing at the feeling of muscles tense and hard as durasteel under his fingers. Hux’s back is slightly stooped now, his shoulders slumped, utterly unlike the impeccable posture he always wears. Kylo is about as well-versed in massages as he’s in economy, but even his clumsy rubbing seems to work at least a little. Hux sighs, clearly enjoying Kylo’s touch.

“You know what has ridiculous prices?” Hux asks, then moans happily when Kylo’s fingers start to knead harder. “Art. A painting of some famous artist in the royal palace on Theed is worth more than a whole planet in the Unknown Regions. I remember that one of the cadet’s grandfather in the Academy bought a blueprint of the Executor for fifty million credits. It was said that Darth Vader himself made it.” Kylo frowns at that: he has never heard about that, and he knows all there is to know about Darth Vader. "What a damn fool! Throwing away fifty million credits! And it was probably a forgery, anyway."

Suddenly Hux turns around. Kylo’s hands have to let his shoulders go. He stares up at Kylo. “You have Darth Vader’s helmet, right?”

“Yes.” Kylo doesn’t like the glint in Hux’s eyes.

“We could sell that! There’s a half-legal Imperial auction house on Eriadu, do you know how many million credits some weirdo would pay for Darth Vader’s actual helmet?”

“No! Absolutely not!” Kylo exclaims, glaring down at Hux. That helmet is his! Kylo is the only one who can truly appreciate it and it was really hard to get, there’s no way he’s going to sell it to some rich Imperial, not even to help Hux. “If you dare to mention that you want to sell it ever again I will cut you down with my lightsaber.”

Hux stares at him with wide eyes, then looks away. “Fine, Ren, can you just calm down? I won’t suggest it again. Fuck, I had no idea it’s such a… Whatever.”

Kylo goes back to the bed and lies down, and Hux goes back to doing whatever it is he’s doing now, taking a sip of tea every now and again.

Kylo continues fuming, but after a while he realizes Hux simply can’t know how significant grandfather’s helmet is. He can’t sense the breathtaking way the Force trembles around it, the sheer power that’s still  _there_ , even decades after Darth Vader’s death. Hux doesn’t  _understand_ , and there’s no point being mad when Hux’s sacrilegious suggestion was made in ignorance, not malice.

Watching Hux work is about as interesting as watching stormtroopers stand guard. Kylo even dozes off a little after a while, his head resting on Hux’s pillow, surrounded by Hux’s familiar, pleasant scent. But it’s only a shallow sleep, and he wakes up soon. At first he thinks he woke up for no reason, but then, as his grasp on the Force becomes more steady, he can sense the overwhelmingly strong mental exhaustion radiating from Hux. That must have been what woke Kylo. It’s a miracle Hux doesn’t fall off his chair.

Kylo suddenly has an idea how to make Hux feel… better. His cock twitches, encouraging him, as he gets off the bed.

“Let me suck you off.” Kylo, now on his knees, puts both hands on Hux’s knees, squeezing them.

Hux stares at him, surprised. But he opens his legs, allowing Kylo to settle between them. “I should continue working.” But he makes no move to stop Kylo’s hands from taking his cock out, even thrusts his hips forward a little.

“Hux, I can sense with the Force how tired you are. It must be awful. You will make mistakes, if you work too hard without any break. Let me make you feel better.”

It would take too much time to take Hux's whole length into his throat, because for some reason Kylo is quite clumsy at that. So Kylo settles for pulling as much of Hux’s cock into his mouth as fits and wraps his fingers around the rest, his other hand cupping one of Hux’s balls. And if there’s one thing Hux doesn’t have enough of tonight (well, other than money) it's time.

Kylo pulls his head back a little, lavishing the head with tiny little licks and kisses until Hux starts squirming in the chair, moaning quietly somewhere above Kylo. He teases the little drop of pre-come out of the slit with the tip of his tongue, and Hux cries out, his hand suddenly in Kylo’s hair, not to guide him, just trying to hold on.

“Oh, fuck, Ren.” Now, instead of the exhaustion, all Kylo can sense with the Force is the shining hot arousal that blazes in Hux, urging Kylo’s tongue on to wander up the straining length. “Your mouth…”

Kylo draws back, lets Hux’s cock pop out of his mouth, licking his lips. He smirks up at Hux. “What about my mouth?”

“Put it back into your mouth,” Hux grits out.

Kylo could tease him for hours, but they don’t have time. Maybe tomorrow. Though Hux would probably want to spend the next day sleeping – Kylo can see him in his uniform in front of Snoke, wanting to appear strong and proud and confident, but unable to hide his bleary eyes, almost swaying on his feet, clenching his jaw to smother his yawns.

Kylo continues, curling his tongue the way he knows Hux loves the most, bobbing his head with even more eagerness than before, sometimes giving Hux's ball a gently playful tug. The warm come that fills his mouth as Hux groans loudly makes Kylo whimper around the twitching cock. He swallows diligently, enjoying how the come makes his mouth wetter, filthier, even though the slightly bitter taste is not his favorite – it must be all that damn caf.

Hux recovers quickly from his orgasm, primly tucking his softening dick back into his pants. Still, he doesn’t kick Kylo out from between his legs, instead starts combing Kylo’s hair with his fingers. Kylo rests his chin on a knee, nuzzling against the soft fabric as he tries to lick the remaining traces of come out of his mouth.

“When you were cutting corners with the food,” Kylo starts, eyes fluttering shut in delight as Hux’s fingers meet a little knot and cleverly begin to undo it. “What about the caf? Could you find another version? Or perhaps something else to drink?”

Hux snorts. “Nothing is cheaper than the caf we have now.”

Kylo hides his disappointed grimace into the curve of Hux’s knee. Oh well.

Hux’s fingers move from his hair to grab his shoulders, tugging Kylo up. Hux pats his thighs, and Kylo climbs onto his lap after a moment of hesitation. Hux wraps his arms tight around Kylo’s waist.

“Are you hard?”

“A bit, yes,” Kylo admits. It would be impossible to not get excited when he has Hux’s cock in his mouth. “But it’s fine, it will go away.  _You_  worked so hard,  _you_  deserved a little break.”

“Thank you,” Hux whispers, pressing a little dry kiss to the tip of Kylo’s nose, then to his cheek. He waits for Hux to  _actually_  kiss him, but Hux leans back in his chair instead. Maybe he doesn’t enjoy the bitter taste of his own caf-tainted semen much either. “Will you be here all night? There’s still so much left, but if you stay with me tonight, I will be able to do it. I hate to admit, but I don’t think I would be done with the budget  _and_  survive this night without you – one or the other, perhaps, but not both.”

Kylo grins smugly. They both stare at the floating holograms in the air: the numbers and charts and diagrams are still incomprehensible for Kylo.

But the Force around him – no, around both of them – suddenly pulses, wild and hot and painful, like the all-consuming fiery collapse of a star. A warning and a promise, whispered into Kylo’s ear by the Force itself. All the colorful data in the air may don't reveal much to Kylo, but he understands what they will bring: death and suffering, triumph and glory.

Hux, deep in his own thoughts and deaf to the magnificent, horrifying song of the Force, tears his eyes away from the holograms to look at Kylo.

“I hope you will be standing right there next to me when we use the weapon. I hope I will be able to share this great achievement, this unimaginable victory with you, Ren.”

Hux’s eyes are sweeter than Kylo has ever seen them before, yet there’s also something dreadful in them that makes him shiver. Kylo smiles at Hux.

**Author's Note:**

> Hux is obviously not responsible for buying the food for the crew, but as the commander he has the power to meddle with anything for budget reasons. I now have the silly headcanon that the officers on the Finalizer love to complain about not just Kylo, but Hux as well. It’s like: "Sure, Lord Ren chokes people and destroys important parts of the ship with his freaky lightsaber, but is the General any better? He’s the reason we no longer have meat-flavored ration bars and Coruscant brandy. And I hate having to drink the shittiest caf in the galaxy."
> 
> Also: Is this how economy works? I’m not studying economy at all, so I can only hope! You can tell me if I messed something up, I would be very grateful, actually!
> 
> EDIT: If anyone wants to know how the economy doesn't really work, read [this comment](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7628212/comments/70693201). I hope you still enjoyed the fic despite it, I warned you I'm not an economy student, haha, but I think this comment is super interesting!


End file.
